BACK TO WEBSITE

1.15.2012

Midnight in [Anywhere]

Have you ever seen Midnight in Paris? I saw it at the Little Theatre this summer and got a huge kick out of it, and watched it again recently. If you haven't seen it (see it!) the premise is: an unlikeable Hollywood writer turned novelist and his unlikeable fiancée go to Paris with her unlikeable parents, where the protagonist (who in reality is supposed to be quite likeable, but I can't stand Owen Wilson…) discovers he can time travel at night, succeeding in meeting his extremely likeable literary idols like Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald etc. Predictably, he falls in love with the 20s and a certain mademoiselle in his new (old…) artsy circle.

Woody Allen (huzzah!) is making fun of "Golden Age Thinking"-- the desire to live in the past; the era before the present is always the Golden Age to us.

WELL. As I was watching I thought-- uh, yeah! Totally. I am one of those too-good-for-my-own-time, just-wanna-live-in-the-past-ists, I guess. But actually, the more I've been thinking about it, I am grateful for this time. It's funny, as the internet starts to spin out of control, I think about how saturated our lives are with information. Global and local news, research, events, ideas, art, communication, media, at our fingertips. It's kind of stressful! Is there an equal amount of good and bad to this? I'm not sure.

I appreciate the past, and I am open to the future. With all this overwhelming information in "real time," it's hard to acknowledge the present. As an annoyingly critical (self and otherwise) individual, I find it personally difficult to place myself in my generation. I want to be important! ..but not in a bad way …?

Especially at this time in my life, in a lot of ways I'm "only 21" so it's OK to still be exploring, but I'm really not OK with there ever being a time when it's not OK. Change is inevitable, but where we go? Ah, the possibilities...